Some of eyeglasses-type wearable devices (eyewear) detect an eye potential. In such eyewear, a change in an eye potential caused by eye motion or eye movements of a user is detected by detection electrodes provided with nose pads and a bridge (a part in front of the brow of the user) between eye frames of the glasses. The eye potential changes depending on types of the eye movements of the user (up-and-down and right-and-left movements and blinks). Using this mechanism, the user with the eyewear can perform data input corresponding to the types of the eye motion or eye movements.
According to the prior art eyewear, the electrode contacting the user is provided with the bridge, which does not contact a user in ordinary glasses. That is, in such eyewear, contact points with the face of the user are not only the nose pads and some user may possibly feel uncomfortable in wearing.
Furthermore, the data input is only made by the eye movements in the prior art eyewear and eyestrain should be considered. Thus, data amount (or the number of data items) which can be input in series and types of the data to be input are limited.
Therefore, as a target of the present application, embodiments present an eyeglasses-type wearable device which can handle various data inputs.
According to an embodiment, the eyeglasses-type wearable device has right and left eye frames arranged near the positions of right and left eyes and nose pads arranged at the position of a nose, and the device includes a display provided with at least one of the right and left eye frames, a gesture detector which detects a gesture indicative of a movement of a user, and an eye motion detector which detects eye motion or eye movement of the user. (Since the display is provided with at least one of the right and left eye frames, the gesture detector can be provided with at least one of the right and left eye frames.) The eye motion detector can be provided with the nose pads, and an electrode contacting the brow of the user may not be required.
Data input from the gesture detector (data input A) and data input from the eye motion detector (data input B) are obtained and a combination thereof can be used. Input data types can be increased by using such a combination, the eyeglasses-type wearable device which can accepts various data inputs can be achieved.
Furthermore, the data input operation is performed by not only eye motion or eye movements but also gestures, and thus, eye strain of the user can be reduced.